Offices Held

Biography

Robert was certainly of the third and possibly even of the fifth successive generation of the Cuddon family to represent Dunwich in Parliament.

Between 1427 and 1442, if not for longer, he held property in the parishes of All Saints and St. Martin which had once belonged to his father, and he is mentioned in a number of petty pleas in the borough court rolls of the period: clearly, Dunwich remained his home. Yet, through marriage he acquired a manor in Shadingfield, and he also held half a knight’s fee in Theberton (worth 50s. a year) as a tenant of the Mowbrays, dukes of Norfolk. From his father he had inherited land in the vicinity of Beccles, which he retained until 1440 when he conveyed it to a group headed by Sir William Phelip*, who had acted as his father’s feoffee many years earlier. Phelip had recently been created Lord Bardolf, and as chamberlain to Henry VI and member of the King’s Council he was an influential figure, whose friendship might well have proved valuable to the Cuddons.3

Cuddon attended the Dunwich elections to the Parliaments of 1420 (then acting as mainpernor for Richard Russell II), 1423 (mainpernor for Thomas Brantham*), 1426, 1429, 1431, 1435, 1437 and 1449 (Nov.), while in his capacity as bailiff he was responsible for making returns in 1422 (when he failed to do so), 1427, 1433 and 1453. In April 1429 he was associated with three others in recognizances for £160, in which he was liable to Joan, widow of Sir John Braham*. In 1449 a merchant from Stowmarket was pardoned his outlawry for not appearing in court at Westminster to answer Cuddon for a debt of £20. He had long been closely associated with the Genny family, and in April 1451, while up at Parliament with one of them, he witnessed a conveyance on their behalf. On 4 June, not long after Parliament was dissolved, he stood surety in the Exchequer for the burgesses of Dunwich when corporately granted responsibility for the fee farm of the borough, and it seems likely that he had been instrumental in securing this concession.4

Shortly after Cuddon’s death in 1462, two of his sons sued each other in Chancery for land in Stoven and Sotterley, which he had purchased from his father-in-law’s executors.5